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Pete Thamel, ESPN
Ohio State is targeting Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork to become the school’s next athletic director, sources told ESPN.
The hiring process is in the final stages per sources, with some finality expected in the upcoming days. In recent days, sources told ESPN that officials had reached out to other finalists and told them they were no longer in the running.
Bjork’s expected hiring brings a paradigm shift for Ohio State athletics, in the wake of the retirement of longtime athletic director Gene Smith, and is symbolic of a new direction from new president Ted Carter, who began his tenure in recent weeks.
For years, the parlor game at athletic director conventions had been: which one of Smith’s successful Ohio State proteges would replace him at Ohio State? There were always plenty of potential candidates who had worked under Smith, including Washington State’s Pat Chun, Pitt’s Heather Lyke, Utah State’s Diana Sabau and UCLA’s Martin Jarmond.
Carter’s targeting of Bjork indicates a preference for a fresh start over institutional knowledge.
Bjork would arrive having just fired Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, which came at the cost of the highest buyout in the history of the sport. Texas A&M owes Fisher more than $76 million of the fully guaranteed deal. Bjork did not hire Fisher but was athletic director when the contract extension that led to the buyout was issued.
In the wake of Fisher’s firing, Bjork executed an unartful coaching search that ended with the hiring of Mike Elko. It included a public courtship of Kentucky’s Mark Stoops that backfired, as Stoops ultimately ended up saying at Kentucky. Texas A&M is not expected to make a push to keep Bjork.
Bjork brings more than a decade of SEC experience. He worked at Ole Miss as the athletic director from 2012 to 2019 before being hired at Texas A&M. Prior to Ole Miss, he worked as the athletic director at Western Kentucky and he worked as an associate and assistant athletic director at places like UCLA, Miami and Missouri prior to taking the Western Kentucky job.
Ohio State looms as one of the top jobs in college athletics. Smith is set to retire in July after 18 seasons, where he emerged as one of the sport’s most respected voices. Eight times during Smith’s tenure, Ohio State finished No. 1 in the Big Ten in the Director’s Cup standings.
Ohio State has 36 sports, and during Smith’s tenure the school won 32 team and 117 individual national championships.